Waves and tides may one day provide electricity to homes - but a backlash is building

Standing on a bridge high above the rushing emerald
waters at Deception Pass, a narrow strait in Washington's Puget
Sound, Craig Collar voices a sense of wonder.

"Just think
about the power there," he says. With flows of up to eight knots
(or a bit more than nine miles per hour) the site has "definitely
the highest currents in the Sound."

Could this powerful
tide someday light up homes? Collar, the senior manager of
energy-resource development for the Snohomish Public Utility
District, will spend the next several years finding out. Following
passage of a statewide ballot initiative last year, Washington's
big utilities were required to beef up their renewable energy
sources - not including traditional hydropower. Collar believes
that underwater turbines turned by tides at Deception Pass and
elsewhere in the Sound can one day provide electricity for up to
60,000 homes. And the Snohomish utility is hardly alone in testing
the waters: Up and down the coast, utilities and private developers
worried about climate change and oil dependency are putting money
into this newest source of power - the Pacific Ocean.

Ocean power in the West is only in the preliminary stages - there
are currently no devices in the water on the West Coast - but
already environmentalists, fishermen and even divers are gearing up
for a battle. Some observers hark back to the West's one-time
embrace of dams. "We heard very similar comments about hydro-power
decades ago - it's cheap, clean, all those nice catchphrases. We're
living with the results, good and bad," says Clint Muns, director
of resource management for the Puget Sound Anglers State Board.

Local environmentalists are concerned about possible
impacts to fish as well as to scenery. Deception Pass is not only
one of the most-visited state parks in Washington, but also an
"outstanding natural area that has every salmon from the Snohomish
and Skagit (running) through it," says Steve Erickson of the
Whidbey Island Environmental Action Network. "This is not a place
to experiment."

Erickson's group would like to see
extensive study and slow implementation of the new technology,
noting the mass raptor deaths caused by the large-scale
introduction of wind turbines at Altamont Pass in California in the
1980s. In the San Juan Islands, ocean machines have been jokingly
referred to as "orca blenders," says Amy Trainer, staff attorney
with Friends of the San Juans. Her group is concerned about the
potential development of two sites in Puget Sound, citing impacts
on the fish, the views and navigation. "It's a tricky position for
everybody," she says, "because we obviously want alternative
energy, but it has to be done responsibly."

The
potential of ocean energy is vast, but the technology is
mostly unproven. Water is roughly 800 times denser than air,
meaning it can pack tremendous energy. With the ocean's energy, the
U.S. could potentially generate enough power to meet 10 percent of
current national electricity demand, according to Roger Bedard of
the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit that is leading
the research in the field.

Applications for preliminary
study permits have soared. The Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission, or FERC, the lead agency overseeing the nascent
industry, received 43 filings for preliminary marine-energy permits
last year, versus 16 in the previous two years combined. More than
half are for sites in the Pacific.

Ocean power isn't
cheap. The first projects near San Francisco's Golden Gate could
produce power for 5 to 16 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is as much
as three times pricier than wind and four times more costly than
coal, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. But
prices should come down as the technology improves. The federal
government - which currently does not fund ocean-power research -
may also start chipping in. Rep. Jay Inslee, a Democrat from
Washington, is pushing a bill that would provide $50 million
annually for 10 years for ocean-power research, plus tax credits.

Ocean energy breaks down into two main
categories - tidal and wave. The West has both in
abundance. Tidal power, the type being considered for Deception
Pass and seven other sites around the Sound, harnesses the ocean's
twice-daily ebbs and flows using underwater turbines, which are
similar to wind turbines. The best sites have plenty of fast-moving
water and not too much eddying (the latter could derail Deception
Pass).

Large tidal stations have been operating in France
and Canada for decades. Those stations resemble dams with sluice
gates, whereas Deception Pass and other small modern sites would
hide the turbines underwater.

The only tidal station now
operating in the United States is a small experiment in New York's
East River, where six grid-connected underwater turbines have been
in place since April. The country's most promising tidal sites
include San Francisco Bay (under the Golden Gate), Alaska's Cook
Inlet, the Western Passage in Maine and Admiralty Inlet in Puget
Sound.

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Great reporting. One clarification though, the Makah Bay Finavera project license was surrendered in April of this year. Check out the FERC website. Thanks for getting more people on the alert about this. Check out my article in Terrain if you're interested.